At MacStories, we use iMessage on a daily basis as our team chat. Alongside the occasional meme, Twitter link, or article we need to check out, the Japanese emoticon is a common occurrence in our ...

An emoticon is a blend of ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’, made up of characters from a keyboard, whereas an emoji (a combination of the Japanese ‘e’ for ‘picture’ and ‘moji’ for ...

Emoji date back to 1999 when they first appeared on Japanese cell phones. But it’s history goes further than that, because before there were emoji, there were emoticons. Emoticons were the ...